Since Brazil’s first-ever climate-change bill was filed in the national Congress in July, momentum is gathering to make the legislation’s mandatory provisions voluntary. An industry backlash? Not exactly. Environmental groups themselves support the change. Their concern is that as now worded, the bill would not allow Brazil to take advantage of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a provision of the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM allows polluters in industrialized nations to meet their eventual emissions targets by underwriting greenhouse-gas-reduction projects in the developing world. Brazil is eager to take part in that process by selling carbon-dioxide emission reduction credits to developed-nation governments and companies, but there’s a complication: The CDM only applies to voluntary projects. “Since [the legislation’s] measures are... [Log in to read more]